


Two Slow Dancers

by queensmooting



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 09:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20306932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queensmooting/pseuds/queensmooting
Summary: Erwin is only nineteen when they meet, a lifetime ahead of him. It’s the first stroke of luck Levi’s had in centuries.





	Two Slow Dancers

**Author's Note:**

> yes like the mitski song WHATever
> 
> (full details about the implied suicide tag are in the ending note)

The library swims with sleepy-eyed students, cramming before exams begin later in the morning. It’s too late to make a proper meal of any of them but he likes the atmosphere, the orderly shelves and the quiet clean and the turn of crisp pages. With his head tipped back against a sturdy encyclopedia spine he feels the movement of the library through his body. The careful shuffle of hushed footsteps. The wooden scrape of chairs. The weight of millions and millions and millions of words.

Some even older than Levi.

“Are you alright?”

Levi glances up, tearing his eyes away from the gilded spine of an old dictionary across the row. A young man, tall enough on his own, towers alarmingly over a seated Levi.

“Are you?” Levi answers.

The man--hardly a man, really, twenty at most--only smiles. “It’s just--you’re sitting on the floor. And you look...pale.”

Levi rolls his eyes. “Gonna ask if I’m a vampire next? Gonna ask if I bite?”

The poor boy, something actually flashes in his eyes at the suggestion. It’s quickly gone, replaced by a genial smile, but Levi still feels the urge to press his tongue to his teeth. Now Levi bothers to take in more of him. The unnecessary height is accompanied by unnecessarily well-groomed hair for a library full of sloven students, and unnecessarily warm blue eyes. A half-eaten sandwich pokes out of a napkin in his hand. Levi stares.

“Yeah.” He waves the sandwich toward Levi. “There’s garlic in here, watch out.”

“Ooo,” Levi holds his hands up. “Well, I better get out of here, the sun’s coming up.”

“Perhaps you should,” he says, eyes drawn to Levi’s mouth like he’s looking for fangs.

Tonight Levi walks home hungry and sated nonetheless, eyes full of gold and blue, the morning sky he hadn’t seen in so long.

*

Levi doesn’t go back to the library, not immediately. The following night he scans first floor dormitories for open windows. He could climb higher if he had to, could see every ridge and brick he’d use for footholds on his ascent, but his days without caution are far behind him.

That night he feeds just enough to sharpen his senses, quicken his limbs, take the edge off a dogging thirst. Then he returns.

The young man types away at a computer, reading glasses perched at the hook of an impressive nose, lips pursed in concentration. Levi pretends to hold great interest in a shelf of travel books near the computer. He touches the names of all the regions he’d made a home in, the countries where he lived, the cities he came to love before being driven out.

It’s at least four minutes before the young man finally looks up. “Well if it isn’t the vampire.”

Levi turns around, making a show of surprise. “If it isn’t the comedian.” He nods at the computer. “Exams later?”

“Unfortunately. Had one yesterday, too.”

“How’d it go?”

He sighs, removing his glasses. “Dreadful, I think. Did nothing but study for days but I have three more exams to go and I kept confusing my notes--it’ll be a miracle if I don’t fail.”

“Don’t be so sure. You always--” Levi corrects himself. “We’re all our own worst critics.”

The young man’s smile unfurls slowly. “My dad always used to tell me that. What’s your name?”

“Levi.”

“Levi. I’m Erwin.” He meets his eyes, smile still spreading like the break of sunrise. “Have we had a class together or something?”

_ Erwin _. “No. No, I’d remember you.”

“You stole my line.”

Levi smiles like he hasn’t smiled in--months? Decades?

When was the last time he let himself keep company?

When was the last time he wanted?

*

Levi’s home is a one-bedroom apartment off-campus. Outside the street-facing blackout curtains he’s decorated the windows with enough band posters and political slogans to give himself the appearance of an exceptionally average student. When he runs a few years behind the times he takes long midnight walks to learn that Bastille was out and The National was in. Every year made it harder to keep up, harder than the years before, when progress came at a trickle. Nothing’s made him feel his age like the twenty-first century.

Until he met the young man at the library. Levi couldn’t remember feeling so carefree. Young. Human.

Neither had he ever seen Erwin like this.

Levi knew it was him the moment he met his eyes, suspected ever since the sound of a familiar heartbeat drew him to the college town. In a way Erwin was the same man from his memories, the same committed, hardworking, gentle, odd-humored man. All that’s changed is the burden, the horror, stripped away from his eyes and heart.

Even at his loneliest Levi knew it was better Erwin didn’t remember.

*

Erwin is only nineteen when they meet, a lifetime ahead of him. It’s the first stroke of luck Levi’s had in centuries.

They never meet anywhere but the library, even after the quarter ends and Erwin’s perfect grades come in and he’s free to go for spring break. He leaves for a weekend to visit his mother, then he’s back, with campus empty and theirs.

And he still hasn’t dropped the vampire joke.

“I wouldn’t have to keep accusing you,” Erwin says casually, “if you’d grab coffee with me sometime. Sometime in the _ morning? _”

In his lousiest attempt at a Hungarian accent Levi says, "I don't drink...coffee.”

Erwin's laugh is a loud bark, earning a reproachful glare from the librarian, the only other soul around.

"Wait, really?" At Levi's nod Erwin says, "Are you a Jehovah’s Witness or--no, that’s not right. Who is it that doesn’t drink coffee?”

“Um.”

“Pentecostals?”

“Something like that, sure.”

They both laugh to imagine Levi devout.

“Well?”

“My family was--they're Jewish, but honestly? Coffee’s just gross.”

“Order a soda, then. Tea. Water. My treat.”

The terribly familiar generosity of him ties Levi’s tongue, offering nothing but a defeated sigh.

*

Levi manages to work them into a late evening meeting at a campus cafe, using a part-time job as an excuse.

Spring quarter starts as their friendship blooms. Levi brings odd textbooks he’s collected to their study sessions, complains about classes he’s not enrolled in, gossips about professors he’s only seen through windows.

Even as he wallows in Erwin’s nearness (and the ankle he hooks on a rung of Levi’s stool, and the close-leaning whispers he plants in Levi’s ear) Levi knows the lie can’t hold. Erwin belongs in the light.

Levi will disappear. He’s done it before, left friends and brief companions before dawn to restart life in a new city, a new country, a new hemisphere.

Someone selfless would have left Erwin weeks ago, not drag him along before the inevitable desertion. But Erwin carried the warm scent of sunshine in his skin and Levi could’ve taken and taken and taken forever.

He’s taken before. Another Levi took humanity’s greatest chance for freedom as they cried and died for it all around him. He’s lingered while Erwin bled on a rooftop, the only pocket of silence in the ravaged city. Levi never knew until he died himself, until his uncle brought him back. Then he saw his old life like a great column of cloud, endlessly unfurling, and he understood.

He couldn’t remember the names of his friends from a hundred years ago, but he remembers every line between Erwin’s brow, the exact way Erwin slicked his hair.

The old Erwin only ever smiled this bright in secret, with no one but Levi around, no one to scream _ where is my daughter my father my sister what was the point you monster killer beast what was the point. _

Seeing Erwin alive and content was more than Levi ever dreamed. He wouldn't dare dream more, wouldn’t tempt the merciful hand of the universe who extended him this offering.

So he leaves. Packs his meager apartment and moves into a suburban sprawl town in the next state. Flee and settle, settle and flee. A pattern old and practiced as it was lonesome.

*

It’s not the first time he’s torn himself in two for Erwin.

Through the haze of agony that accompanied his transformation, every cell ripped apart and stitched together new, Levi was gifted a flood of memory. A first he thought it to be a fever dream. With fangs came flashes of fleshy, colossal creatures. With bloodlust came visions of a golden-haired man, solemn at the head of a vanguard.

Then Kenny, frank as ever, told him it was real. All of it. They pieced their separate memories into a whole then never spoke of it again. At least with their past filled in Levi wasn’t surprised when Kenny left him one night, five years after transforming Levi, off to terrorize Scandinavia.

Perhaps it was penance for the blood he drained. Perhaps for the lives he took as Erwin's right hand man. Perhaps it was nothing more than a cosmic joke. Kenny certainly thought so, taking life at will, making ridicule of humanity.

The child he once was took Kenny for a role model. Levi, grown and reborn, wouldn’t make the same mistake.

*

It took Levi six hundred years to find Erwin. It takes Erwin six days.

It doesn’t occur to Levi to ask how he tracked him down. When he wanted it badly enough, Erwin always found an answer.

It’s morning when Erwin knocks, so Levi is careful when he lets him in, hiding behind the door until it shuts. The brief flash of light is enough to leave his eyes stinging and senseless. Erwin says something, a rumble of pressure over Levi’s ears growing clearer as the sun-sick nausea ebbs away.

“What?”

“I said are you alright? You look--well, you know.”

Levi can imagine how he looks, haggard and grey. He hasn’t fed in weeks, still a stranger to the city, liable to attract attention if he went skulking about the neighborhood at night.

So he’s only half-attentive to Erwin’s words, wishing he could focus. Something about Erwin not having many close friends growing up, not wanting to let this one go, how he didn’t know if Levi was even alive, and Levi starts laughing then, and so does Erwin--

“I’m sorry. Me showing up like this, God, how dramatic can you get?”

“It _ is _flattering,” Levi manages. He can’t believe he’s here.

“I just needed to know you were okay. I’d regret it my whole life if I didn’t know.”

Levi’s heart aches to see him like this, so young, so open, with no idea how regrets could poison a life, could poison centuries.

“I like you, Levi. I really like you. I want to spend more time with you, and...”

Levi smells his blush before it happens. _ Fuck _, he’s hungry, his teeth ache for it. He needs to get Erwin out of here.

“I want that too,” Levi says. “But I have to tell you something.”

“Tell me later. I have an afternoon class, I have to go, I just--didn’t want you to disappear again.”

“You won’t want me back when I tell you.”

“Try me. Come see me this weekend. Friday, after class.” He squeezes Levi’s shoulder. “Please?” 

_ He’s always been reckless. No, a gambler _. “Okay. But let’s make it Saturday morning. Early.”

That night he finds an open window in the warm air, an old man so deeply asleep he never budged as Levi fed, cautious in the throes of his hunger, then waited as the wound healed and the man’s snores evened.

The blood settles nicely. The moment he can no longer taste the heat of Erwin’s blush he slips back into the dark.

*

Levi waits for Erwin outside his apartment early Saturday morning, rolling a rock under his shoe. He’ll get it over with, then he’ll be gone. Perhaps Scandinavia. His uncle took to it well, the wild lonely forests and long sunless winters. Perhaps he’ll find the peace Kenny never had.

Under a navy pre-dawn sky Erwin jogs up the street, home from another late-night library session, a textbook under his arm (history, Levi’s favorite as well as Erwin’s, the one subject he couldn’t exhaust).

“You came,” Erwin says, like he hadn’t expected it.

“You wanted the truth. Do you still want it?”

“Yes.” Erwin’s brow furrows. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

_ Rip the bandage _. “Remember when we first met? You said I was like a…?”

Levi starts laughing before Erwin does, an half-expected joke.

“God, you had me worried you were dying or something.” Erwin smiles. “Now, is there really something going on or do you want to come in?”

Levi wills the smile from his own face. “Erwin, I’m serious. Look.”

He steps closer, opens his mouth, lets loose his fangs.

Erwin’s eyes widen. “How did you do that?” He puts a hand under Levi’s chin, tilts it up, looking for a trick.

Behind them the navy lightens to gold. A shiver runs through his spine. _ I’ll never see him again _.

“Look.” He rolls up a sleeve, holds it to the growing light. His skin sears and he bites his lip to keep from crying out but still he holds out his arm, till small flames lick at his wrist.

“Shit!” Erwin rolls Levi’s sleeve down but still his skin burns, cracks under the rising sun.

Erwin throws off his coat and wraps it around Levi, blocking him from the light. “Shit, you’re--”

“Yes,” Levi hisses.

Under the density of the coat and the shade of Erwin’s body the flames die, the pain fades, piece by piece.

Erwin’s eyes, huge in shock, never leave Levi’s.

*

Then Erwin invites him in so eagerly Levi can’t help laughing.

The movies got it wrong. Nothing as simple as a threshold could hold back a vampire. But Erwin looks too delighted to say the words. Levi doesn’t have the heart to correct him.

Levi huddles coat-sheltered in the entry as Erwin rushes to pin blankets over the windows. Despite the pain, Levi can’t help peeking over the collar of Erwin’s coat. He hasn’t chanced a glimpse of daylight in too many years.

The Erwin of their old life would have accepted him this readily. Levi hadn’t been sure about this new Erwin, who still burned candles at both ends but smiled easier, laughed louder, didn’t hoist every trouble of the world onto broad shoulders. 

He watches Erwin busy himself, all to keep Levi comfortable, and the familiarity of every gesture eases into his body like warmth from a teacup.

Erwin puts hands to his hips, nods approvingly at the room, then turns to Levi.

“So. You’re…”

“Yeah.”

“Well. I can’t say you didn’t warn me.”

They settle onto opposite ends of the couch, Erwin’s gaze open and curious in the weak lamplight, Levi still basking in the reality of him.

"Can I ask a personal question?" Erwin says.

"More personal than if I’m in the legions of the undead?"

"Yes."

"Shoot."

"How did you…did someone turn you? Is that how it works?"

"My uncle."

"Your uncle?" Erwin repeats, horrified.

Centuries later he could still see the reluctance, the hurt in Kenny’s eyes as he knelt over his sick nephew. To his uncle’s credit, the bite didn’t hurt. What came after was different.

“When the plague came to us he promised my mother I wouldn’t die.” Levi pokes at a loose stitch in the couch cushion. “So now I won’t die.”

“Levi,” he says, so softly Levi realizes he hadn’t kept the regret out of his voice as well as he planned.

But the regret had become a distant childhood friend, scarcely called upon, growing more distant every day. Something new had come to take its place.

Erwin is silent for a moment, eyes never leaving Levi’s face. “When was this?”

"1374."

Erwin inhales. It’s another few moments before he says, "You don’t look a day over five hundred.”

Levi laughs sharply, deeply grateful for the shift in mood. “Fuck off.”

“You could help me on my Hundred Years’ War paper."

"Like you need the help, nerd."

Erwin drapes an arm over the back of the couch, head tilted. “So you’ll come back?”

“You’re not afraid of me?”

Erwin’s fingers dangle inches from Levi’s knee. “A little,” he says, grinning ear to ear.

*

At dinner a week later, when Levi’s resettled, Erwin pours them each a glass of red wine. He eyes Levi’s throat as he drinks.

“So you don’t only drink blood,” Erwin says, as if they’re not surrounded by populated tables.

“No.” Levi puts down his glass. “As long as I work a cup or so in every few weeks my body functions like it did when I was--alive. But it has to be human. Animals don't hold me over long.”

They lower their voices, though over the last hundred years Levi’s learned he could tell these modern humans everything about his condition and they’d sooner believe he could grow gills.

“Tell me everything,” Erwin says. “Obviously garlic’s not a problem--” (he smirks as Levi shoves another bite of pasta into his mouth) “--but holy water? Stakes? Any of that?”

Levi shakes his head as he chews, swallows. “Nah. Just the sun. When we’re first changed we can handle it, it’d hurt like hell but we wouldn’t die. But now? Old as I am?” He smiles wryly. “I’m half dust already. I’d go up like gasoline if I exposed myself.”

“You said ‘we.’ Are there others?” Erwin glances out at the restaurant, as if expecting to see Count Orlok clearing tables.

“There were.” The question hadn’t occurred to him, it’d been so long since he picked up another vampire’s scent. “When I was new you were tripping over them, but it was the fucking Middle Ages, what would you expect? Now though...shit, I dunno. Heard my uncle died some two hundred years ago and haven’t met any others since. Some big culls during the witch hunts, of course. Some more when all those penny dreadfuls got humans excited about hunting us. Some I suspect just wanted to see a sunrise again.”

“Oh Levi. I can’t imagine how lonely it is.”

He doesn’t need Erwin to pity him more than he is, so he doesn’t voice his occurring thought. With or without vampires, he’d been lonely for over six hundred years.

"Well." Levi eyes a smear of marinara at the corner of Erwin’s mouth and smiles as he reaches for a napkin. "It was."

*

They see a movie on their next--Levi supposes they’re not _ dates _. Their next something.

A third sequel to a second spin-off of some action series, their only option at the height of summer. Not that it mattered. No movie could have distracted him from the soft stretch of tan forearm on the seat rest beside him, the long fingers drumming against the cup holder.

When Erwin mixes his popcorn and M&M’s Levi watches like an apprentice watching a master at his craft. It was one of the few charms of immortality, the way human curiosities could still surprise him.

Levi steals a handful, pops it into his mouth and remarks, “This is fucking exquisite.”

“It reminds me of you.”

“Hm?”

“A little of both. Salty and sweet.”

“Oh my _ God _.”

Erwin’s eyes gleam in the dark.

It isn’t until the long walk back to campus that Levi realizes how long it’d been since his last dose, at least six weeks. His limbs had been sluggish for days but he’d been too busy with Erwin to notice. The theatre snacks settle poorly in his failing stomach.

“Are you alright?” Erwin brushes fingers against the pallor of Levi’s cheek. “You need to eat, don’t you?”

“Mm hm,” Levi says as he walks into Erwin’s side.

Erwin laughs, not unkindly. “Here.”

He crouches slightly, reaches for Levi’s hand. Levi stares.

“Get on,” Erwin says.

Levi’s too tired to argue. He takes Erwin’s hand and climbs on his back, wrapping his arms around Erwin’s shoulders.

Erwin grunts as they set off. “You’re heavier than you look.”

“Too much to handle?”

“Never.”

Levi settles his head against Erwin’s shoulder. He’s old, armed with centuries of self-control, but something hot rolls through his dying gut at the expanse of warm skin inches away from his nose.

Then he realizes it isn’t bloodlust.

He runs the backs of two fingers along Erwin’s neck. “You’re sure you trust me here?”

Erwin shivers beneath him as he says, “Yes.”

Not bloodlust at all.

*

They’re living together a year before Erwin offers. Given his penchant for peril, Levi’s surprised it took this long.

They rarely talk about the nights Levi leaves to hunt. Erwin knows he hates the necessity, despite the fact Levi hasn’t actually killed in two hundred years. Levi approaches the task like Erwin approaches waking up for an eight o’clock class, groaning and dragging his palms down his face.

“You don’t have to go,” Erwin says.

Levi holds up a shaking hand. “Wanna bet?”

Erwin jots a note in his binder, one of many study materials sprawled over the coffee table. “You seem to forget.”

“Forget what?”

“The ample blood supply under your own roof.”

Levi sighs. “Erwin, no.”

“Why not?” Erwin turns a page, smoothing it down with his hand.

“What do you mean ‘why not’? Do you know what you’re asking?”

“You could show me. You told me once it doesn’t hurt.”

“If you do it right. If you know how to beguile the mind. But it takes years, when I was first made it was all screaming and mess and--”

“And now you know,” Erwin says gently, pulling him from the dark. “You don’t hurt people.”

“No. Not anymore.” Levi rises, reaching for his coat. “I’ll be back later.”

“Do I smell that bad?”

Levi turns back. Erwin’s finally looking away from his binders and books, a smile bitten back at his mouth.

“Erwin.” It’s meant to be a warning but it comes out tender. _ Damn him _.

“I see the way you look at me. Do you want it?”

He did. Erwin’s heartbeat was a warm song drifting through Levi’s senses, relentless scent and sound. But his hair smelled even sweeter. His eyes were a stronger pull than his blood.

“I do want something.”

And finally the casual, easy note of Erwin’s voice drops when he says, “Then take it.”

So Levi does.

He sets his folded coat on the arm of the couch and slides in behind Erwin, leaning forward over the table. Levi smooths hands along Erwin’s shoulders until he leans back against Levi’s chest, neck already at the level of Levi’s mouth. 

"You want this, too?" Levi asks.

"Yes," Erwin says, so low he can feel it.

Levi traces thoughtful fingers along Erwin’s neck, the sturdy bone at the front, the thick muscle under his jaw, the soft dip above his collar. Levi indulges in the race of blood under his hand, the warm thrill of it he can almost taste in his mouth. He breathes deep of it a last time, then slides his hand up Erwin’s jaw to his hairline. Erwin stiffens until Levi slowly, slowly drags his fingers through soft strands, from behind his ear to the base of his scalp, curling his fingers as they lift from Erwin’s nape. He repeats the languid motion, and repeats, hunting and gathering every hitch of Erwin’s breath.

Erwin trembles at every touch, an endless breathless shiver Levi can feel in every cell, and he can’t deny how much of it is him, too, helplessly affected. He’s never been this aware of his own body. Not at the knife’s edge of desperate hunger. Not at the bright-eyed high of a fresh feed. 

“Are you doing it?” Erwin whispers.

“Doing what?”

“Beguiling me. Whatever it is you do.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Oh.”

Levi strokes Erwin’s hair until his head relaxes against Levi’s. Then he lets his hand glide across his jaw, to rest at his lips. Erwin’s half-lidded gaze opens.

“Oh,” he says again, all soft, welcome surprise. 

Erwin turns enough to watch him like a patron at a play, eyes barely blinking. Levi’s fingers trail off Erwin’s mouth, even softer than it looked, to rest at his chin, to nudge him closer, infinitesimal. They never did this in their last life. There was an unspoken something, they both knew it, and still they never came nearer than a brush of hands. Never came nearer than waking up pressed against each other in a bed shared for convenience.

“Are you sure?” Erwin asks, even as his voice goes so quiet Levi isn’t sure he’d heard it if he were human.

Levi’s hands tighten, holding his face still as he presses the lightest, lightest kiss to the corner of Erwin's mouth.

“Yes.”

The softest brush of Erwin’s nose against his cheek sends a shiver through his body, through his heart. Erwin can’t know what this means. He can’t comprehend how long Levi's waited.

“Are you?” Levi asks, because he has to know it isn’t just him.

Erwin grins, a press of teeth Levi can feel. “I was happy to let you drink my blood and you ask--” 

He loses his train of thought, or else grows impatient with it, and pulls Levi in for a proper kiss.

*

Levi feels almost human again watching Erwin go through school, through birthdays, through pains and disappointments and joys.

Sometimes they parted for days at a time when Erwin would visit his mother (they discussed introducing Levi but no, too complicated, what if they broke up, what if they never did, what would she make of the young man who couldn't stay for holidays and slept odd hours and never passed for more than twenty-five no matter how old her son grew). Erwin would send longing texts after hours, _ hours _apart, and it never failed to strike Levi. Levi, who lived each century imagining how Erwin would react to a line in a book, an amusing sign, a burst of birds across the sky. How it was like having a ghost at his side. How he missed him long, long, long before he ever touched him.

He doesn’t tell Erwin about the love they had. He doesn’t need to. They find it again on their own.

*

When Erwin graduates he sees new beginnings. Levi sees a crossroad.

Teaching programs on the east coast. University positions abroad. Not that it mattered; Erwin could stay right where he was and the years would still separate them.

Erwin settles on an offering from a college on the other side of the state, teaching history, starting in a matter of weeks.

Levi doesn't get more than a few words into a prepared speech (_ I can go, I've stayed too long as it is, you deserve someone you can bring into your family, someone you can start a family with) _ before Erwin interrupts him, says he's ready to fill his life with Levi, and asks his opinion on a nearly-windowless apartment.

So Levi packs his things, fewer and fewer over the years. Clothes, umbrellas, sunglasses, blankets and other wrappings when he couldn’t find shelter before morning, a few French Baroque pieces (“awful people, sure, but it _ was _the best time for fashion,” he tells a horrified Erwin), weapons (now antiques) of his uncle’s, a ring of his mother’s worn colorless with age and touch. 

In a few years they buy a house in a woodsy neighborhood not far from Erwin’s school, well-shaded, relatively secluded. The woman across the road visits them the day they move in, with a cherry pie and warnings of Sasquatch sightings. Erwin assures her with grave sincerity that he’ll keep an eye out for anything supernatural.

And throws a wink over her head when she goes to cut the pie. Levi rolls his eyes.

Levi takes night shifts to help with bills, mostly desk security, where he can read during lulls and intimidate passersby when he must. When Erwin’s established enough he requests evening classes, getting himself out of a daytime schedule with the excuse of an exceptionally nocturnal pet cat. Levi doesn’t speak to him for several minutes when Erwin tells him this.

Still, even through his mock-outrage, he can see Erwin in the dean’s office, making an earnest plea for his case. The other Erwin’s stern strategy was lost on his own Erwin, but he can still see how he might offer a winning smile, put a hand to his heart, balance his scales with equal humility and confidence.

It’d be too complicated for them to marry. Too many official documents Levi could never pass off or keep up with. But on their fifth anniversary Levi shows Erwin his mother’s ring anyway, pulling it from the box where he’s kept it clean and safe all these years.

Erwin is silent when he runs a thumb over the old metal, understanding the weight of it, the meaning.

“If I could,” Levi says, “I’d give it to you.”

Levi attempts to slide the ring on Erwin’s pinky and they both laugh when it won’t go past the first knuckle.

*

“Levi!”

Erwin’s voice, panicked, makes Levi’s gut drop. He tosses his book aside and sprints to the bathroom.

“Levi, look.”

Erwin’s fussing at his forehead, pushing hair aside.

“Does it look thinner to you?”

“What?”

Erwin sighs. “My dad was half-bald in the back by thirty, figures this would happen.”

Levi flops back against the wall. “This is about your _ hair? _”

“Of course, if I stopped aging it wouldn’t be a worry.”

Levi meets Erwin’s eyes in the mirror. They’re never discussed it, never. Levi took Erwin’s aging as the fact it was, only ever considered the alternative in the briefest moments before sleep, half-delirious guilty thoughts of eternity with this man.

“No, Erwin,” Levi says firmly.

Levi stays while Erwin finishes brushing and grooming, the silence insufferable. He needs Erwin to feel it. He can’t ask Levi again. He can’t. Levi isn’t sure how long he could resist.

“You shouldn’t anyway,” Erwin says lightly after a while. “You deserve better than a bore like me at your side for all time.”

It almost sways him. It was almost certainly Erwin’s intention.

“Yeah, well.” Levi shuffles his feet against the tile. “I’ll just have to find something to keep me entertained after you’re gone.”

“I’m sure you will.” Erwin kisses his forehead on the way out. “My old man.”

*

Levi does allow him one indulgence. He has his own curiosity to satisfy, after all.

Once again he’s let too much time pass between feedings. Once again Erwin smells like a feast at his side, arms a tangle in bed where they’re both reading (another charm of immortality, enough time to read every novel he could think of, every classic, every page of history, a gift he can't help thinking Erwin would appreciate far more than himself). Erwin won’t stop rubbing the half-faded hickey on his shoulder and the constant swell of blood scent is more than Levi can take, eyes squeezed tight, tongue sealed against his upper teeth, like he can keep his fangs at bay if he only presses hard enough.

“Fine,” Levi says.

“Fine,” Erwin repeats, always on Levi’s side, always without question.

Levi breathes deep. He needs to wrest every molecule of control in his body if he’s going to do this. _ You love him. You’ve always loved him. You won’t hurt him _.

Levi sets his book down and throws the covers aside, moving to straddle Erwin’s lap.

Erwin folds his reading glasses and sets them on the bedside table, taking in the dark of Levi’s eyes, the glint of fangs behind his lips. His eyes light with realization.

“Really?” Erwin asks, barely masking his delight.

Levi nods. He puts a hand on Erwin’s chest and leans in to kiss him, each time shallow, teasing, pushing Erwin back down whenever he tried to deepen a kiss. His fangs weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

He softens Erwin like this, primes him, then takes equally soft kisses to his jaw, his neck, where Erwin arches against him. He passes kisses over his collarbone, his shoulder, where Levi left a mark only two nights past. And lower.

Erwin opens his eyes. “Levi?”

“It hurts least here.” He smooths hands over Erwin’s stomach, down to linger at his thighs.

“Shit,” Erwin breathes, closing his eyes again.

If he did it right it wouldn’t hurt anywhere, but he doesn’t want to put Erwin to sleep like any other unwitting victim. He wants to do this together.

Levi dots kisses high on the inside of one thigh, as far up as his boxer shorts will allow, caressing and working his mouth over the skin until Erwin’s whimpering for it. He swallows self-loathing with a reminder he’s probably satisfying some Harlequin boyhood fantasy of Erwin’s. _ Heaven help him _.

“I won’t take much,” Levi says, appalled at the low growl of his own voice, “but tell me if you want to stop.”

Erwin nods quickly.

Levi closes his eyes. _ It won’t hurt, it’s alright _. He sends the thoughts out, through his hands into Erwin, feels the muscle relax.

Erwin gasps at the bite, but it’s a gasp Levi’s heard enough to know his little mind trick worked.

Levi’s true to his word, drinking slow, hardly more than a few lingering tastes, but it's enough to sustain him if he lived another six hundred years, another six thousand, and Erwin’s hand finds its way to his hair before he tears himself away.

He presses two fingers to the marks, lapping up the last few drops to escape, and waits as Erwin breathes hard above him. After a moment he lifts his hand to the wound, bruised but closed, already near-healed.

“You okay?” Levi asks, voice even rougher than before.

Erwin takes Levi’s wrist to pull him up and roll them over. Now Levi gasps. Now Erwin melts him into the pillows with the deep kiss he wanted, settling his weight carefully on top of Levi. He’s astonishingly hard against Levi’s stomach.

“I’m very okay,” Erwin assures him.

“Good,” Levi breathes, hooking a finger in the band of Erwin’s boxers. “Then get this damn thing off.”

*

In some ways he’s lucky it took this long to find Erwin.

Things were different in the twenty-first century. Human life had never been perfect, but Levi had seen enough suffering to know change for what it was, fussy and plodding as it was.

And they could be together, really be together. On certain city streets they could walk close, arm-in-arm. Perhaps they’d get a few funny looks, but they never led to anything more, no jeers, no inquiries, no trials, no death.

Levi knows how reluctant humanity is to learn from its mistakes but in every age he saw seedlings sprout through the ground and small creatures open their new eyes and stars peeking out again and again and again. Nature would endure. Perhaps humanity would endure with her.

Erwin smiles when Levi voices thoughts like these, listens intently, assumes Levi's centuries of experience gave him wisdom. Levi doesn't answer. He can't take credit, not when his hope in humanity came from a man who gave his life to defend them. Not when his hope came from Erwin himself.

*

Erwin nears forty and fear steals into Levi's heart. He’s never seen him older than this.

Levi returns from work breathless with relief to hear Erwin’s heartbeat. Then Levi’s stomach turns to see him walk out the door for office hours.

He can’t fathom him older. He can’t fathom the universe letting him be this lucky, this long.

“Stay,” Levi says in bed, the night before Erwin’s birthday, the night before Erwin’s flight to a conference.

“If you insist,” Erwin says, abandoning his half-packed trunk and falling into the bed.

Levi snorts but settles close, looping an arm around Erwin’s neck. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“You’re a werewolf too. I knew it. I knew no vampire could have legs that hairy.”

Levi’s quiet long enough for Erwin to pull back, looking into his eyes. “Wait, are you?”

“No.” He lowers his eyes. He can’t look at his Erwin while he remembers the one he lost. The one he let go.

He tells Erwin everything. The family sent into hiding, the underground, the man who saved him from a life of darkness. The Survey Corps. The Titans. The man who became his world.

He tells Erwin everything. Or, almost everything. He says he lost Erwin to a Titan and leaves out the rooftop, the serum, the choice. He can't put that on Erwin. Not again.

“Do you believe it?” Levi asks. “Any of it?”

Erwin nods, hand on a steady path through Levi’s hair. “Of course. I always knew there was something about you.”

“More than the vampire thing?”

“Even more than that. From the day I saw you it was like… like we were dust. Flung from the same star. Brought together again.”

“Hm.” He snuggles closer. “How unbearably romantic. I might be sick.”

"So. This is why you don't want me to go."

"Well now it sounds silly."

Erwin runs light fingers up and down Levi's arm. “You can always keep me, you know.”

“Hm?”

Erwin noses playfully at his hair. “Forever.”

It’s less earnest than the last time Erwin asked. Levi knows Erwin would accept if he offered, and happily. But Erwin couldn’t want to live forever, not truly, not now that he knew the costs. It made his choice to spend his finite years with Levi all the more baffling.

Levi presses a fangless kiss to Erwin's throat. “You have a flight in the morning. Go to sleep.”

*

Erwin lives. And lives.

Across the years they make due with night; games of baseball under city lights, dances under moonshine spilling across the ocean, bakeries opening their doors an hour before the threat of dawn.

When they dance Levi wonders how he ever could have feared Erwin’s thinning skin, his slowing limbs, his aging heart.

Erwin passes fifty and Levi learns to love it. There’d be time for fear later. In both their lives he’d never seen Erwin grow old.

*

“This looks weird, doesn’t it?”

Levi huffs, holding tighter to Erwin’s arm as they meander through the produce section. “I probably just look like some kind of old folks’ aid, quit being paranoid.”

“I’m not _ that _old.”

“No. No you’re not.” Levi waggles his eyebrows.

“Well _ now _it’s weird.

Erwin laughs at his own joke, and the cough that’s plagued him for weeks surges forth.

“Do I have to drag you to a doctor myself?” Levi frowns, holding Erwin steady. “Hey, you alright?”

Erwin nods, then buckles. A red-spotted hand grips a basket of oranges.

*

The scans were bleak, the doctor’s face bleaker. 

Levi wished he could turn back the pages of his own history, put a mark every one of his sins, repent and repent and repent until he washed himself of all the wrongs he let live under Erwin’s roof. Perhaps then they’d have better luck in a third life.

Erwin, long-accustomed to mortality, nods and shakes the doctor’s hand. No treatments, no trials, no (as Erwin called it) “prolonging the inevitable.” A pill for pain and a prognosis of four months and they were on their way.

“At least I didn’t need any shots. I used to give my mom holy hell when it was time for my shots.” Erwin chuckles. “Levi?”

They don’t have time for Levi to fall apart. So he doesn’t.

“So you’re saying you’ve _ always _been a pain in the ass,” he says, taking Erwin’s arm.

*

They take care of all unsavory business first. Will updated. DNR signed. Funeral plans finalized.

Then they live.

Then they walk through the woods and dance on the beach and read aloud to each other until it hurts too much for Erwin to breathe.

Erwin brings it up one last time. When Levi shakes his head Erwin doesn’t look surprised. In their last weeks Levi finally told him about the rooftop, owing him a final truth. Now he knows Levi’s made the choice before. He knows how it hurts Levi to say no. 

“If it were the other way around,” Erwin says, “I don’t know if I’d have the strength to do the same. I don’t know if I would be selfless enough not to turn you.”

“You would.”

Levi slides his fingers along Erwin’s, so thin now it hurts somewhere he can’t touch. Almost as thin as Levi’s own.

It gives Levi an idea. “Be right back.”

He hops to his feet, rummaging through his bedside drawer until he finds it. It takes longer than it ever used to. Life with Erwin built up more little gifts than he’s ever had.

Levi takes Erwin’s hand again and slides his mother’s ring on his finger.

Erwin looks at it in wonder, holding the metal to the light. “It fits now.”

Levi presses his hand to his lips, holds it, holds it until the sob in his throat melts away.

*

Erwin alerts him well past midnight with a tap on the wrist. Levi looks into his eyes. He’s known death twice and now Erwin knows, too.

Together they rise.

From the gable window Levi helps Erwin climb onto the roof. It takes everything out of them. Levi’s been too preoccupied to feed and Erwin, Erwin rests his head on Levi’s shoulder where they both know it won’t lift again.

Levi remembers another rooftop. This time they’re alone together. This time Erwin can hear his voice, at least for a little while. This time Erwin wants to go with stars in his eyes.

“You should go in soon,” Erwin says. “It won’t be long.”

“How do you know?”

“I can hear my father.”

_ Like last time _ . Life hit him then, its cruelty, its minute and crucial acts of kindness. _ But if this is a circle then we’ll keep going. We’ll get another chance. I’ll see him again. _

“Go,” Erwin says, his voice far away. “Go see Finland this winter. You can be out all day.”

He breathes slow after that, each sentence draining him. Levi won’t let his last words to Erwin be a lie, so he only holds him closer. This time he'll make no promise he can't keep.

“Go to sleep, Erwin. I’ll see you in the morning.”

His breath stills then, like all he ever needed was Levi’s permission. Levi rests his head against Erwin’s. A blush of rose bleeds into black velvet sky and it doesn’t hurt at all.

It'd been minutes at most, and still Levi wants to tell Erwin so many things. He misses him already.

**Author's Note:**

> the implied suicide happen at the very end of the fic, is not shown graphically at all, though the method is implied (levi is a vampire facing the sunrise)


End file.
